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Further ties of NSA to Equation Group hackers

arstechnica.com

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Re: Further ties of NSA to Equation Group hackers

#41

Post by mikeyouse »

ccvannorman wrote: post #17

The reason it's a big deal is because as more power accumulates in the hands on the "adults in the room", the more likely those adults are to become creepy, overbearing assholes -- There are many examples, the most prominent one in my mind being that the FBI/Hoover tried to convince MLK to kill himself, fully backed by the government. As the NSA et al get more [unchecked] power it will become more corrupt, isn't this…

Small correction, it was J. Edgar Hoover's FBI that tried to get MLK to commit suicide (not the CIA);

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensore...

Re: Further ties of NSA to Equation Group hackers

#42

Post by arkem »

cryoshon wrote: post #27
arkem wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment would be stronger if you omitted the final sentence. Fortifying your opinion by preemptively calling other people contributing to the discussion "astroturfers and apologists" is poor form.

Shrug. Consider JTRIG: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Threat_Research_Intellig... They're very blatantly using astroturfing and shilling to silence people who go against their idea of the way things should be. I doubt HN is going to have an astroturf quotient as high as someplace like reddit, though.

It's not about whether there is any astroturfing going on, it's preemptively calling it out, implying that everyone who disagrees is astroturfing.

It's similar to people who say things like "I know I'm going to get downvoted, but". Instead of making assumptions about the nature of a discussion in a comment people should wait for the discussion to develop before judging.

If you know someone is astroturfing call it out. If a post isn't appropriate or isn't contributing to the discussion call that out. Just don't assume that people are participating in bad faith, especially before that participation has even occurred.

Re: Further ties of NSA to Equation Group hackers

#43

Post by alecco »

arkem wrote: post #7
alecco wrote: post #6

No more claims from moral high ground from USA government. No sympathy for the devil. Now brace yourselves for astroturfers and apologists.

Your comment would be stronger if you omitted the final sentence. Fortifying your opinion by preemptively calling other people contributing to the discussion "astroturfers and apologists" is poor form.

Yeah? What about what obviously happened in this story a couple of months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8905643

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8905321

Re: Further ties of NSA to Equation Group hackers

#44

Post by lawnchair_larry »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #30

From the article: "saying only that the operation had to have been sponsored by a nation-state with nearly unlimited resources to dedicate to the project." Hmmmmmm, you mean like Russia or China? "malware developers endeavor to scrub usernames, computer IDs, and other text clues from the code they produce. While the presence of the "BACKSNARF" artifact isn't conclusive proof it was part of the NSA project by that nam…

Nothing in your post is in line with reality. You've cherry picked statements out of context to imply that they are not exclusive to the NSA, ignoring the smoking guns that were presented and failing to link them. There is simply no question that this is USG malware, and you'll notice that Kaspersky, who, no, does not have extensive ties to the FSB and Russian government, actually stops short of attribution, unlike pretty much everyone else.

http://eugene.kaspersky.com/2012/07/25/what-wired-is-not-tel...

Re: Further ties of NSA to Equation Group hackers

#45

Post by LLWM »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #26
tptacek wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what repercussions there should be for that, but any consideration of repercussions has to consider the alternative to electronic attack, which is airplanes dropping munitions from great heights onto buildings with people in them. People should probably not kid themselves about geopolitics and military competition vanishing if we somehow manage to regulate "electronic warfare".

>which is airplanes dropping munitions from great heights onto buildings with people in them. I know that you didn't mean for your comment to be taken literally but there is literally zero chance of enemy airplanes invading US skies and dropping munitions from great heights onto buildings with people in them. It is a silly thing to say and it does nothing to justify the current situation vis a vis the NSA et al. Try…

Of course there isn't. The US would be the attacker in this scenario. And we most certainly still do bomb people with aircraft.

Re: Further ties of NSA to Equation Group hackers

#46

Post by cryoshon »

arkem wrote: post #42
cryoshon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shrug. Consider JTRIG: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Threat_Research_Intellig... They're very blatantly using astroturfing and shilling to silence people who go against their idea of the way things should be. I doubt HN is going to have an astroturf quotient as high as someplace like reddit, though.

It's not about whether there is any astroturfing going on, it's preemptively calling it out, implying that everyone who disagrees is astroturfing. It's similar to people who say things like "I know I'm going to get downvoted, but". Instead of making assumptions about the nature of a discussion in a comment people should wait for the discussion to develop before judging. If you know someone is astroturfing call it out…

Fair enough, but I really do think there are some (admittedly non-NSA) situations where the astroturfing campaign can be easily predicted beforehand. In these easily predictable situations, it's better to warn people...

Specifically, conversations regarding Israel's involvement with Palestine or Russians involvement in Ukraine tend to become very quickly polluted by vast swathes of low-quality comments which effectively shut down discussion.

Re: Further ties of NSA to Equation Group hackers

#47

Post by LLWM »

kriro wrote: post #19
venomsnake wrote: post #2

Is this really a big deal? They were doing exactly what NSA was supposed to do. We moved from NSA should not spy on everyone to NSA should be toothless ...

Since the NSA has shown that they really don't care who they spy on all news about more efficient surveillance by them is relevant to both US citizens and non-citizens imo. As a citizen I'd be pretty alarmed by NSA-level activities of my local agencies because quite frankly it's way too excessive and privacy is a lot more important to me than the supposed security massive and not very transparent surveillance activit…

It's the way of the world. Everything has impact on everything else.

In the past, you had "privacy" speaking with someone in your own home. Even though the vibrations could theoretically be felt through the walls, we didn't have sufficiently sensitive instruments to recover that into speech. Now we do, and that technology is never going to be uninvented - it's only going to get better.

If you can't adapt to changing times, no hard feelings. The same thing happens every generation. The world can move on after you grow old and die.

Re: Further ties of NSA to Equation Group hackers

#48

Post by LLWM »

rqebmm wrote: post #11
strictnein wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's all getting a little ridiculous. Every country has been spying on every other country since the beginning of countries. The leaks from Snowden, Greenwald, et al are becoming less about privacy violations and unjustified data collection and more about legitimate spying efforts, but they're still being met with breathless outrage here and elsewhere. Also, are we really thinking "Grok" is some sort of identif…

The information on the Equations Group/TAO are coming from Kaspersky Labs via Ars Technica. They are unaffiliated with Snowden/Greewald/et al. The leaks from Snowden that I've read thus far they do not mention anything about what TAO does. They are hinted at as the "big guns" you go talk to when you have actionable intelligence.

There was a large leak that included what was basically an internal catalog of TAO-created devices and modules. That's what they are crossreferencing the codenames against.

Re: Further ties of NSA to Equation Group hackers

#49

Post by LLWM »

kiba wrote: post #14
venomsnake wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The resources that sabotage unwanted nuclear programs ... are resources well spent. This part of NSA is caring the mandate. Highly targeted, highly efficient, no collateral damage, no dragnets, delivering results.

Yesterday's legit NSA operation and toolkit is tomorrow's cybercrime and hacking toolkits.

So this is yet another NASA-like example of military spending driving research that eventually gets repurposed for civilian use? Great!

Re: Further ties of NSA to Equation Group hackers

#50

Post by ig1 »

venomsnake wrote: post #2

Is this really a big deal? They were doing exactly what NSA was supposed to do. We moved from NSA should not spy on everyone to NSA should be toothless ...

Because a government hacking another government to disable military infrastructure is clearly an act of war. Spying is a pseudo-accepted peace time activity, military sabotage isn't.
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